A Divorce
by Some Mad Person
Summary: - doesn't necessarily mean the end of a relationship. Reno's being himself but Yuffie's lost between the lines and postpartum blues.


**A DIVORCE**

**by some mad person.**

Marrysong :

_He never learned her, quite. Year after year_

_that territory, without seasons, shifted _

_under his eye. An hour he could be lost_

_in the waited anger of her quarried hurt_

_on turning, see cool water laughing where _

_the day before there were stones in her voice._

_He charted. She made wilderness again._

_Roads disappeared. The map was never true._

_Winds brought him rain sometimes, tasting of sea-_

_and suddenly she would change the shape of shores_

_faultlessly calm. All, all was each day new:_

_the shadows of her love shortened or grew_

_like trees from an unexpected hill,_

_new country at each jaunty helpless journey._

_So he accepted that geography, constantly strange._

_Wondered. Stayed home increasingly to find_

_his way among the landscapes of her mind._

_- Dennis Scott, 1930-1991._

Mornings in Midgar are not what they used to be, not after Meteor. There is hardly any traffic yet and the city stirs like the groan of a dying man.

There is a stain on his bed that looks like piss but smells of Chartreuse. The girl's legs are twisted beneath the blanket, and her half-painted toenails are sticking out. He stares at her feet and gives up remembering her name. It doesn't matter anyway. He shuffles to the bathroom and feels a brief flash of anger when he notices her thong drooping miserably over the shower head, but shrugs it off and rinses his mouth in the sink. There seems to be a lot of red in the water.

The bed groans an apology as she rolls over its weakened springs and connects her forehead with an upturned lampshade. He doesn't hear her gripe about her missing underwear, apparently too engrossed with cancelling the messages on his answering machine before they have a chance to play.

Reno feels morbidly domesticated, and prepares for a taxi.

* * *

Yuffie had awakened to rough dialects and the shifting of large furniture in her father's martial arts chamber, and is slightly disgruntled by it. A mover enters the kitchen for a third helping of beer and makes away with the newspaper when he thinks she is not looking.

She rolls her eyes and rummages for a pair of clean shorts. She doesn't really like living in Wutai, at least not with Godo. But it is somewhat better than living in a house with no memories. She has no memories of Midgar, she chooses not to.

After confirming a shopping appointment for next Tuesday with Elena, she jams a corduroy hat on top of her tousled hair and wonders if she can make the eleven-thirty ferry.

* * *

"On second thought," says Reno, "I'll like to call for two cabs, please." He doesn't leave extra fare for the girl.

* * *

They are sitting gingerly on white rattan chairs in the smoking section of the coffee house he chose. It is reasonably cold for July, and she instinctively dips her face towards her mug until the tip of her nose is wet from condensed steam.

He looks upon her behaviour, mildly put off.

"Stop that. You're acting like a fucking kid."

"I _am _a kid, Reno." She wishes she didn't sound so defensive.

The waitress sets a cup of coffee before Reno, and he makes no attempt to touch it.

They pass the following hour torpidly. She copies him when he crosses his legs and helps to peel the almond pieces off his biscuits because she knows he doesn't like them. This results in him being obliged to adopt a more civil position in their conversation, and feeling mischievous, he decides to remark on the weather,

She is cleverer at switching topics, however, and they attempt to capture the basis of their relationship by means of statistical figures, but end up losing count on the number of times they have broken up.

"You've only kissed me twice, though." She says, not regretfully.

"I do like kissing you," he counters, "When I'm not so mad at you."

"Okay. But you're always mad at me." The coffee house they are in is small and furtive, and somewhere in the outside world they hear the snap and crackle of long-devastated reactor cables.

He tilts his head to one side, and the loose ends of his ponytail dip into his wet saucer. She yells at him for it - she likes his hair better than her own, after all – and stabs a reproachful finger into the left side of his chest. It happens to be the same spot where a bullet-proof vest had failed two weeks ago, and he glares at her, irritated.

"Goddamn it, Yuffie!"

She grins at him and leans over the table, planting a floppy kiss near his eyebrow. "There we go again."

He sighs.

"You know, you remind me of this poem." Reno wraps a serviette around his ponytail.

"You don't read poetry, Turk."

"You're the one who doesn't read." He replies calmly. They stare at each other for a few moments.

Failing to evoke a more aggressive response of sorts, Yuffie empties another satchel of sugar into her tea. "I went out with that Helga girl last Friday. You know, the one who works on the 48th. She's pretty hot, and I think she might ask me out again."

Reno silently questions the objective of her statement but does not interrupt, out of a contrived politeness he never knew he had.

"She goes to our gym on alternate weekends and god, you should see her work out. I think you should do your hair like hers, jet black and spiky all over, I mean, it's been what, years, and you haven't changed the way you look. Or maybe a trim. I think you could handle a trim. Did you know that I lost my cat that day after work, but she came back two weeks after, all bedraggled and pregnant. _Pregnant_, you know."

And then she stops talking, because there is a pain in her chest, a muffled sort of pain like there are worms eating her inside out and her breath catches in her throat.

A pause. "We hadn't given her a name."

Her voice slips along the cheerful walls of the café, and he realises how small she is by stature. He also realises that he is nearing thirty years old.

He intends to retort along the lines of "Funny how you get attached to something you killed with your own hands," but tangles his fingers with hers and feels the knob of callused skin along the side of her index finger. He picks at it in a mechanical fashion, although unlike a scab it does not slide off cleanly like he would have wanted it to. She was always very good with that flying metal thing.

"Shuriken."

"What?"

"A shuriken, Reno. A shuriken." Yuffie reiterates, and her hands withdraw to encircle her mug again. Reno's gaze does not leave that ridge of dead skin on her finger. It is almost maddening, and suddenly he has an urge to hit her for it. However, he does not make it a habit to strike at females, unless they are part of some planet-saving group, or if they happen to be little girls. Reno does not care very much for children, and wonders if Yuffie has ever begrudged him for her prenatal depression.

"I don't – I don't think I did."

Reno forces a chuckle at how competent she is at reading his mind, and she chides him for voicing his thoughts too loudly.

"Elly was wrong about the place, though. The food's crap. Rutledge's not a nice person. He's a nasty old bat, at least to me. You didn't have to take the pills; you just needed to say that you did."

"Maybe we shouldn't talk about this now-"

"You fucking, stinking _coward_. You bastard. You didn't stop me then – don't you dare try to stop me now."

Reno wonders how in the world he could have stopped a mentally unsound mother-to-be from splitting her belly open like a wet grapefruit.

"Look, you have to admit that I've been pretty tolerant so far. I even let you hold a sappy burial for that…thing, goddammit." He regrets saying this almost immediately, and is enormously gratified when he discovers that she is not paying attention to him.

"Oh, just take off that damned hat. It looks plain idiotic on you." Also, that particular shade of yellow clashes disastrously with her newly dyed hair, but he does not tell her this.

"I like that hat. It was Tifa's."

"Well, it looks better on long hair. All it does for you is make you look like a fucking cancer patient."

"My mother died of cancer."

"I'm sorry." He does not sound vaguely apologetic.

"It's okay." She is not really listening to him anyway. Reno taps his cigarette dismissively, after which he thrusts the stubble into the edge of the table, for lack of a proper ashtray. There is a disoriented instant whereby he is startled to find it raining, but shifts back into his seat when it turns out to be the rustle of a plastic bag.

"Reno, let's get a divorce."

"Hm." He blinks indolently and transfers his gaze to the wall clock's second-hand. "I thought you'd never ask."

"Besides, I lost the ring some time ago."

"You didn't lose it, you left it at the institution. Dr. Rutledge kept it for you." He supposes he should feel a little insulted but can't bring himself to care.

"Let him keep it. You're supposed to propose, now."

Reno manages a lopsided smile. "Yuffie Kisaragi, will you divorce me?"

"Yes, I will."

He removes his own silver band and tucks it under the bill, then saunters out of the door while Yuffie checks the back of her legs for red marks. The legalities will have to wait, after they have plopped into a cab and had sex at his place. She feels his nose nuzzle the tip of her ear, and wonders why it took her three years to cry.

* * *

The radio is playing in the morning when she uncurls her toes from his hair and scratches absently at the long white scar on her stomach.

It must have been love, but it's over now.

It must have been good, but I lost it somehow.

**FIN**

* * *

A/N: Don't get me wrong, Reno/Yuffie is my FFVII OTP4LYFE, yo. I just have this horrible tendency to mess with my favourite characters; they either end up wishing they were dead, actually dead, or worse, having sex with dead people. (If you don't know which fic I'm referring to, GOOD FOR YOU!)

I wrote the first half of this fic during my high school lit exam. Dennis Scott's _Marrysong _was one of the poems we had to analyse and needless to say I totally flunked the paper.


End file.
